Tuesday, July 6, 2010

G20 Cops Stole Amputee's Leg

Seriously? Are the cops run by a committee including the Marquis de Sade and Monty Python's Flying Circus? According to this story in Niagara-at-Large 57-year old John Pruyn had his artificial leg stolen from him and was badly beaten by riot cops who were protecting Torontonians from our civil rights. Read this disgusting account of what happened:

As Sarah began pleading with them to give her father a little time and space to get up because he is an amputee, they began kicking and hitting him. One of the police officers used his knee to press Pruyn’s head down so hard on the ground, said Pruyn in an interview this July 4 with Niagara At Large, that his head was still hurting a week later.
Accusing him of resisting arrest, they pulled his walking sticks away from him, tied his hands behind his back and ripped off his prosthetic leg. Then they told him to get up and hop, and when he said he couldn’t, they dragged him across the pavement, tearing skin off his elbows , with his hands still tied behind his back. His glasses were knocked off as they continued to accuse him of resisting arrest and of being a “spitter,” something he said he did not do. They took him to a warehouse and locked him in a steel-mesh cage where his nightmare continued for another 27 hours.
“John’s story is one of the most shocking of the whole (G20 summit) weekend,” said the Ontario New Democratic Party’s justice critic and Niagara area representative Peter Kormos, who has called for a public inquiry into the conduct of security forces during the summit. “He is not a young man and he is an amputee. …. John is not a troublemaker. He is a peacemaker and like most of the people who were arrested, he was never charged with anything , which raises questions about why they were arrested in the first place.”

How many more reasons do we need to get an independent public inquiry and Chief Bill Blair's head on a platter? Will cops and politicians only admit that something was seriously amiss in Toronto if it turns out that they beat the Dalai Lama and charged him with being a dangerous anarchist? Oh, but then we'd really just be aligning our policy with that of one of our biggest trading partners, G20 member, China. So it probably would make no difference.